Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/43



Upon the life which is but as a vesture, and as a vesture shall be changed, he who created it has power till the end; appearances and relations he can alter, and turn a virgin to a harlot; but not change one individual life to another, reverse or rescind the laws of personality. Virtue and vice, chastity and unchastity, are changeable and perishable; "they all shall wax old as doth a garment:" but the underlying individual life is imperishable and intangible. All qualities proper to human nature are inventions of the Accuser; not so the immortal prenatal nature, which is the essence of every man severally from eternity. That lies beyond the dominion of the God of this world; he is but the Son of Morning, that having once risen, will set again; shining only in the darkness of spiritual night; his light is but a light seen in dreams before the dawn by men belated and misled, which shall pass away and be known no more at the advent of the perfect day.

All these mystical heresies may seem turbid and chaotic; but the legend or subject-matter of the present book is transparent as water, lucid as flame, compared to much of Blake's subsequent work. The designs, even if taken apart from their significance, are among his most inventive and interesting. They were done "for children," because, in Blake's mind, the wise innocence of children was likeliest to appreciate and accept the message involved in them; "for the sexes," that they